What better way to christen the reopening of the 405 freeway following the Carmageddon II weekend shutdown than with a full-blown police chase?

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A high-speed pursuit of a stolen Jaguar (it looked like an XJ to us) marked the reopening of the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass in true L.A. style.

LAPD Officer Rosario Herrera told the Weekly the chase started about 4 a.m. near Roscoe Boulevard and Haskell Avenue in Van Nuys.

Various television reports say that officers somehow came across a LoJack signal indicating the stolen, white Jag was in the area.

But after the driver hit the pedal and booked at speeds of up to 120 miles per hour, cops reportedly went into "tracking mode" and only followed along via helicopter because of the danger.

News footage showed the car blowing through red lights at high speed and even screaming through the Sepulveda Pass area that had been closed only 5 hours earlier for the final demolition of the old Mulholland bridge this weekend.

The freeway was completely opened about 11:45 last night after being shutdown at midnight Saturday.

The pursuit lasted until about 4:58 a.m., Herrera told us, when the car came to a stop on the 405 at Roscoe and a suspect bailed out.

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Dennis Romero is an L.A. Weekly staff writer. He formerly worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times, where he participated in Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the L.A. riots. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone online, the Guardian and, as a young stringer, the New York Times.